


Held Together With Staples and Duct Tape

by lol-phan-af (lol_phan_af)



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blood and Violence, Dysfunctional Family, Fights, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Multi, Other, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-13 13:07:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11760528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lol_phan_af/pseuds/lol-phan-af
Summary: Lafayette was different. They hated John, they despised him, so when they pushed him into a back room of a bar two weeks after what happened with Alex, hands on his belt buckle moments later, he was as shocked as anyone could be."Whatever you're about to say," Lafayette spit, working his belt out of the loops, "don't.""Got it, doll," John whispered, just to be an asshole. He smiled at them, chipped front tooth and black eye on display, and the glared down at him.Lafayette scoffed. "Fucking southern boy. This could not be more below me."





	Held Together With Staples and Duct Tape

Friendship and love were two different things, two different emotions. You could have friendship without love but you couldn't have love without some form of friendship being there first. The difference between loving and being in love were different too, and you could have one without the other and vice versa. No matter which one it was, or if it was both, or if you loved and were in love with people you considered friends, it always hurt, no matter what you did to prevent it.  
  
John loved his best friends, and he was in love with them. It felt like a bullet straight to the chest, and it always felt like that.  
  
They weren't the best people, his friends, they fought both with each other and other people. Sometimes they were on the same side, sometimes they weren't, sometimes it got so bad they wouldn't speak, or worse, they would put their own cracks in each other's bones. It was a balancing act between love, friendship, and murder, and John never knew which line they'd cross that day, which line he'd cross. He loved them, and they loved each other, but they didn't fucking act like it.  
  
Love chose to present itself in an odd way to John the first time. What should've been a red flag appeared to him as a welcome banner as Alex's bony fist collided with his jaw and fractured it. It was the first fight he was in, he didn't stand a chance to John, and he panicked, did what he could. What he could do was enough, though, everything Alexander did from then on proved to be enough.  
  
"I'm sorry! Oh my god! Fuck, shit, fuck," he hissed as he herded John out of the back alley bar they met in. He tried to fight back, tried to stop this pathetic excuse with one lucky shot from taking him, but he faded too quickly to fight back, and he woke up in a hospital, Alex next to him, biting his fingernails until he hit cuticle.  
  
Maybe it was the painkillers, but John swore he'd never seen anyone as beautiful as Alexander that morning.  
  
Hercules was John's roommate, and he didn't chase fights so much as they came to him. He was big, built, and people thought that he should act a certain way just because of that, so he did. He didn't like it, tried to cover it up in layers and layers of soft sweaters and quiet contemplation over knitting needles and a mug of hot chocolate, but John saw it.  
  
He saw it in the way Hercules slammed a guy's head against a table for throwing a drink at him, fire and whiskey rushing through his veins and the irresistible need to just let go for once in his fucking life, instead of entertaining the empty dream that was true stoicism. Hercules could calm down when he was dead, could clasp together bruised knuckles and pray to a god he does not believe in to spare him from going to the place he'd chased for so long on earth.  
  
"We need to leave," Hercules muttered, and John was once again getting pushed out of another seedy bar. Hercules' hands felt solid on his back, and if he wasn't so drunk, he might do something about it.  
  
"You don't have to fucking push me everywhere," John spit, breaking away from his grip and glaring at him. Hercules didn't hesitate, stepped up to John, hovered over him and made him feel inexplicably small.  
  
"I know you, John, if I don't push you, you don't fucking move. You irritate people for the hell of it, and one day it's going to get you killed. Don't send me to jail because you refuse to cooperate." Hercules grabbed his wrist and pulled him so hard John's shoulder popped, and John ran to keep up.  
  
Hercules was up at seven in the morning the next day, working on a scarf for his mother. Fucking coward.  
  
Lafayette was barely fucking human when they fought people, burning words in their throat and nails long enough to tear skin open and leave you a bleeding mess on the floor. Their teeth were like blades and they knew how to bite so you would feel it, so it would scar. They were perhaps the one to fear most out of all of them, and John made sure not to get in their way often.  
  
"You're a fucking idiot," Lafayette said, lighting their cigarette and throwing away the match. There was blood in their fingernails, on their hands, covering their clothes like they just murdered someone. They looked stunning in the lights of the city, curls tied up in a ripped strip of what looked like a pillowcase.  
  
"How so?" John stared at them, but they didn't bother to look back. His ribs ached like a motherfucker, and it hurt to breathe, but then again it always hurt to breathe around Lafayette.  
  
"You're too small to fight the way you do, you're going to get yourself killed." They exhaled and the smoke curled upward into the night, carried away with the wind into the stars.  
  
"You're not the first person to tell me that. That I'm going to get myself killed, not that I'm too small."  
  
"You're tiny, I'm surprised."  
  
John grinned as he walked away, stinging from the cut on his cheek. "Not where it counts."  
  
Lafayette shook their head and took another drag before discarding the cigarette in the gutter, walking in the opposite direction of John to wherever they lived. John didn't stop smiling until he got home, found Alexander bleeding on his doorstep, blood pooling on the ground in front of it.  
  
"Fuck."  
  
John had some type of half formed relationship with all three of them, and it was nothing John ever wanted but enough to be something he dreamed of. They were attracted to him and he lived on it, and he wanted to be with them every day of his life, thriving on the high they gave him.  
  
Alex and him fought a lot of people together, got kicked out of a lot of different places. Clubs, bars, a VIP lounge to name a few places. Once beat a man to half death outside of a diner for shouting slurs at them when they were walking in the parking lot, still went there every Friday because they couldn't find anywhere else that served better milkshakes.  
  
It was on one of those Fridays, when the milkshakes and diner food were a chaser to the slew of drinks they'd chugged at one of the few bars they were still allowed in, when Alexander pulled John by the shirt and kissed him. John's split lip sung and his broken collarbone ached as Alex's knuckles dug into it, but he didn't care. Alex tasted like blood and french fries, and it wasn't as disgusting as it should've been.  
  
Lafayette was different. They hated John, they despised him, so when they pushed him into a back room of a bar two weeks after what happened with Alex, hands on his belt buckle moments later, he was as shocked as anyone could be.  
  
"Whatever you're about to say," Lafayette spit, working his belt out of the loops, "don't."  
  
"Got it, doll," John whispered, just to be an asshole. He smiled at them, chipped front tooth and black eye on display, and the glared down at him.  
  
Lafayette scoffed. "Fucking southern boy. This could not be more below me."  
  
John collapsed on Hercules' lap after getting home that same night, giggly and drunk and still coming down from the wonderful feeling Lafayette gave him. Their hands were like silk despite how much they hurt, he could still feel them on the corners of his jaw as they showed he only tenderness they'd ever offered him.  
  
"Get off of me," Hercules said, pulling the jacket he was working on out from under his head.  
  
"Hercules, what do you think of me? Like, what am I to you?"  
  
"My roommate."  
  
"More than that."  
  
"My _inconvenience_ ? My eternal cross to bear."  
  
John hummed. "No, I mean, like, if I kissed you right now, would you kiss back?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Would you stop me from kissing you because you didn't _want_ to kiss me?"  
  
Hercules punched his needle through the shoulder of the jacket before answering, "No."  
  
John wasted no time, pulling the fabric from his hands and setting it down on the couch, replacing it by sitting in Hercules' lap.  
  
He maintained an odd sort of arrangement after that. They all knew John was fucking other people. Hercules knew about Alex and Alex knew about Hercules, but they didn't know about Lafayette and Lafayette knew his home address and that wasn't _just his_ home, but they never asked and so John never answered. Lafayette wasn't interested in John's life, or so he thought.  
  
Hercules was like the constant of their apartment. Sometimes the chairs at their dining table would be broken and smashed. Sometimes the countertop would have food knocked over and spilled because Alex liked to be dramatic when John pinned him to the cabinets. The lamps would be on the ground and the television would be half crooked on the stand, but Hercules was always there, on the farthest cushion of that couch, sewing or knitting or doing anything else that would stop him from fighting.  
  
"Hello," John greeted, and Hercules stared at his knitting needles. He wore his wrist brace over the bandages across his knuckles, trying to hide them so John wouldn't ask. Hmm.  
  
"Someone came looking for you earlier," he replied. "They got into an argument with the freeloader-"  
  
"His name is Alex, Hercules."  
  
"Whatever. They got into an argument and then Freeloader punched them and now I think they're fucking in your bed."  
  
" _What_ ?" John threw his bag on the ground and went into his room, barging in on the two people he was sleeping with in the middle of fucking each other.  
  
Lafayette had Alex pinned to the wall, hands held together above his head, legs wrapped around Lafayette's waist and there was blood dripping from his nose, bruises and raised skin around his lips and eyebrow. Lafayette looked worse, cheeks and arm and back scratched by the rough edges of Alexander's bit nails. Alex glared at Lafayette, not even noticing John walked in.  
  
"What the fuck?" John yelled, and they turned to him.  
  
"Hello, John," Lafayette said, throwing Alex onto John's bed and continuing as though nothing happened. John shut the door.  
  
Alex and Lafayette never left the apartment, and after a while of Hercules complaining, he got used to it. John liked it because it meant he never had to go far for a fight, that any day he wanted Lafayette to dig their teeth into his shoulder without care he could get it almost instantly, and if they weren't home then he had other options.  
  
"If you don't shut up, I'm going to make it so you have to," Hercules muttered as Alexander went on about how fucking _boring_ Hercules was, how he never did anything except sit there and knit.  
  
"Are you?" He asked. "Are you actually? I didn't know you _could_ do anything else besides sit there and do whatever the fuck it is y-"  
  
Hercules bounded off the couch and grabbed Alex by the hair, pulling him off of his feet, but not so much that he fell to the ground. Alex was as light as a feather, and Hercules was strong enough that he could most likely hold fifty more of Alexander just like he was now. He cradled the back of Alex's head, with his hand clenched enough that he tugged just enough at Alex's hair. John and Lafayette glanced at each other on the couch, then back at Alex's flushed face.  
  
Hercules tightened his grip and Alex whimpered. "Do you want to keep talking?"  
  
"Please."  
  
He dragged Alex to his bedroom and John shook his head, grabbed a book from the end table that he'd never seen before in his life and started reading it. Lafayette stared at him, knowing the book was theirs and not saying anything, before returning back to their phone.  
  
John never expected them to fall together in a perfectly put together jigsaw puzzle. He never dreamed of an apple pie life with dates and beach trips and an idealistic dream of what everybody wanted but not many people got. He expected that their sharp edges would remain and there would be times when they cut each other, he didn't expect to come home home one day to Alex holding a knife to Hercules' throat while Lafayette drank beer on their couch. Why was it always Alex and Hercules?  
  
"You can't even press hard enough to cut me," Hercules mocked, and Alex dug the blade harder into his skin. John was too shocked to move, but maybe he didn't want to.  
  
"Who the fuck do you know that presses a knife to kill someone?" Alex slid the knife across his skin and John watched one single drip of blood fall in a perfect parallel line. Hercules let go of the countertop he was braced against, and moved all the way across the kitchen with his hands around Alex's neck until he pinned him against the wall.  
  
Hercules squeezed and Alex dropped the knife. "You would never kill me."  
  
"Give the the opportunity and I might."  
  
"Just admit it, you'd never kill me. You're too much of a coward, you rarely ever raise a hand to me."  
  
Alex kicked Hercules in the stomach and Hercules lifted him off the ground. Lafayette still didn't look even as Alex started screaming, John shut the door behind him.  
  
"Fine! Fine, I wouldn't fucking kill you," he wheezed, "now let me go."  
  
Hercules pressed harder.  
  
Tears dripped down Alex's face. "Please."  
  
Hercules dropped him and Alex crumpled to the ground, picking up the knife and swinging at the back of Hercules' leg, cutting his calf and slicing his pajama pants. Hercules shouted and Alex stormed off, taking the knife with him, slamming John's bedroom door closed behind him.  
  
"Go into the bathroom," John said, and Hercules trudged off.  
  
Lafayette took another sip of beer.  
  
"I'm not tired," Hercules complained as John pushed him on the bed, hissing as he moved his leg.  
  
"The pills you just took are going to knock you out in like, twenty minutes, and I'm not carrying you from the fucking living room because you have a brand to uphold."  
  
Hercules grumbled and pulled the blankets on top of him, throwing them over so they covered Lafayette. John still didn't know if they ever slept together or not. They seemed to be soft with each other in a way the rest of them weren't, but they never seemed that close. Every time John asked Lafayette would either not say anything or flick him in the forehead, and Hercules just kept on knitting.  
  
Alex came in around ten minutes later, crawling on the bed next to Hercules, curled into his side and Hercules wrapped an arm around his waist. John didn't fucking get them, but Lafayette grinned like they did. He crawled into bed in between Alex and Lafayette after turning off the lights, wedging himself between them and ignoring how Alex's spine dug into his shoulder.  
  
"Goodnight," John whispered.  
  
Lafayette snorted. "Shut the fuck up."  
  
John didn't understand why he loved them. All they wanted to do was kill each other, all they did was fight. The amount of times they washed blood off the floors or off the walls or their bedsheets was too many to count, and if John tried he was sure to hit triple digits, reaching the higher end of that scale.  
  
John liked when they went out together as one collective unit, when John got to see the people he loved that may or may not love him back be happy, smiling and laughing as they got ready to go to a slightly classier bar than the ones they usually did. Hopefully this meant nobody knew them there, that John didn't have to worry about grudges or somebody breaking his nose _again_ , especially after Lafayette did the last time.  
  
"That was my fucking shirt!" Alex yelled as Lafayette used a raggedy piece of cloth to wipe up spilled foundation off of the dresser. Here we go.  
  
"Too bad, Alex, it was ugly." They ripped the fabric in half once they were done and threw it away, and John watched as Alex took deep breaths and tried not to bash their skull in with his bare hands.  
  
"That's okay," he smoothed out the shirt he wore, "everything is okay." He took Lafayette by the waist as they came back up to him, innocent enough if John didn't know they had bandages wrapping around their entire middle from someone kneeing them and then breaking a chair over their back. Lafayette hissed but put on a smile, grabbing Alex by his bruised jaw and kissing him. Alex gasped into it but still kissed back, biting harshly down on their lip.  
  
"Fuck you," Lafayette spit as they pulled away, wiping the blood away from their lip with their arm.  
  
"Maybe when we get back." Alex sauntered out of the room and they followed, not saying a word as they crammed back into the car.  
  
John wasn't sure they knew how to be kind to each other. He'd watched Lafayette kiss Alex on silent days, soft like caramel and salt water taffy and thought that _maybe_ they wouldn't kill each other, maybe they didn't all want each other dead, but the next day he watched as Lafayette threw a high heel shoe like a knife at Hercules and it lodged into the wall next to his head, so maybe not.  
  
Lafayette picked the bar they went to, and it was obvious from the moment they walked in. The upbeat music and bright light everywhere, so different from the pubs they usually went to, lacking in the blood stains on the floor and glares they got once they walked in.  
  
"This place makes me want to take antidepressants," Alex said, and Hercules snorted. John didn't even know he could do that.  
  
John knew that the peace wouldn't last when he watched over a bright green apple martini as Alex screamed at his mortal enemy and Lafayette's long time friend, Thomas Jefferson. Seeing Alex fight someone who wasn't him or Lafayette or Hercules felt kind of nice, he felt something in his chest bubble up and encase his heart like candy. He was kind of beautiful if you saw his scars as parts of him instead of things put there by the same people they shared a bed with.  
  
"Oh yeah," Jefferson sneered, turning to his friend like he was saying _watch this_ , "and what're you gonna do about it?"  
  
Alex's answer was ignoring Lafayette tugging at his shoulder and full on kicking Thomas in the chest, knocking the wind out of him and sending him flying to the floor. He didn't move beyond that, didn't go to make a second move like he usually did, just watched as he groaned and writhed on the floor. John looked over to see Hercules filming the entire thing. Oh dear god.  
  
Thomas barely managed to get up, rubbing at the shoe mark on his shirt as Alex stared at him with clenched fists. Lafayette didn't tug on his shoulder anymore, but whispered something in his ear that Alex definitely didn't hear as Thomas swung at him and his fist collided with his cheek. Lafayette moved to dodge them and Alex pushed the heel of his hand into Thomas' nose and cracked it, waited for him to stagger backwards before delivering as many blows as he could until he fell again.  
  
"Fucking dick," Alex screamed, climbing on top of him, knees digging into this stomach before sliding to either side of his ribcage. John flinched as Alex punched him, watching as someone who looked like a human being become a bruised impression of something between an oil painting and someone trying to play god.  
  
"Alex!" Lafayette screamed, pulled him off of Thomas and stood in between them. Alex's face was covered in blood, his knuckles were split open and John started to wonder if they were ever closed. Alex spit out two of his own teeth in his hand and looked up at them.  
  
Lafayette went down with one resounding slug to the jaw, and the next thing John knew all three of them were getting kicked out, saying if they left now they wouldn't call the cops. Alex led the way, Lafayette half dazed being dragged out behind him, Thomas stumbling over his own feet. Hercules and John waited to finish their drinks before going to see where they went, because any sign of showing genuine emotions regarding each other was a red flag to them, in addition to all the blood soaked surrender flags hung up on the clothes line holding them together.  
  
"Where the fuck did they go?" Hercules asked as they stood in the middle of an empty sidewalk. John checked the alleys, the buildings on either side, and found nothing, eventually giving up and going home, trusting that Lafayette and Alex would be home soon enough.  
  
John almost didn't notice anything wrong when he walked into their living room, but then he noticed Alex and Lafayette along with none other than Thomas Jefferson in their kitchen, and his heart almost stopped. Lafayette sat on the counter, arms crossed across Thomas' bruised chest, watching John with a gleam in their eyes. He couldn't see any of Alex past the top of his head behind the counter island, heard as he shifted and his knees cracked on the wood floor. He didn't look further than that, pulling Hercules past them and into their room.  
  
Hercules stared at him. "Are you jealous?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"You're jealous of Thomas because Lafayette and Alex brought him home. You know we're not together right? If we were, it'd be way more dangerous. I mean, you don't fucking cut people you love."  
  
John sighed. "So, is that what we are to you? Punching bags that you just happen to live with that you harbor, what, _no_ feelings for?"  
  
"I care about you guys, sure, but I'm not going to fall in love with you. I'm not going to hurt myself and beat myself up every time you think that breaking my collarbone is fun."  
  
"I love you."  
  
"I know."  
  
"I think Lafayette loves Alex."  
  
"I know. I think Alex loves all of us."  
  
"I know he does, but if it came to it, he'd pick Lafayette. I still don't think he's forgiven me for breaking his glasses."  
  
Hercules rolled over in their bed. "If he hasn't forgiven you for anything, it's for breaking his fucking laptop, he doesn't care if you replaced it."  
  
"He better fucking care that I replaced it, he shoved me into the glass coffee table for that one, I could've died."  
  
"I think he knew that," Hercules remarked and then rolled over. "I think all of us want to kill each other, we just have feelings getting in the way. My feelings are, of course, that I don't want to fucking die in jail, but y'all have a ton of shit keeping your hands out of each other's chest cavities."  
  
"Hey, I know you don't _love_ us or anything, but could you-" Hercules didn't wait for John to answer, just pulled him into his arms and kissed the top of his head.  
  
"Goodnight, John."  
  
He snorted. "Shut the fuck up."  
  
Thomas was gone in the morning, and Alex and Lafayette emerged from Hercules' room with no mention of anything. Lafayette pressed a kiss to John's temple and John broke a coffee mug, sending coffee and ceramic everywhere.  
  
Lafayette didn't try to kiss him again.  
  
Days passed between them in silence. John was upset about Thomas, Lafayette and Alex didn't care. Hercules was passive and stuck to knitting, but his knuckles itched whenever John yelled. Alex and Lafayette left and picked fights and sometimes Thomas came back for encore performances. Hercules took John to bed to shut him up and whispered things he claimed he didn't mean as John arched against him.  
  
Hercules tied John to their coffee table one day and they got a call from Lafayette saying they needed to come to the hospital and they didn't _care_ if Hercules pretended he didn't want to be there because it wasn't important.  
  
Alex looked hideous in his hospital gown, bandages covering parts of his face and his collarbone, more wound around his arms. He didn't look the same way he did when they first met, his nose was bent and his eyes were always so swollen, scars across his lips from how many times they'd been split open. His fingers bent in directions not completely wrong just _off track_ , still as bony as ever though. John didn't know this man anymore, but then again, he never knew anything in the first place.  
  
"We can't keep doing this," Lafayette told them. "I don't even fucking remember what the doctor told me about all the damage we did to his bones. Most of his ribs have been broken before, and almost all of them healed incorrectly, he needs a _lot_ of fucking surgery for a whole mess of different things. It's like he's held together with staples and duct tape. I can't even imagine what we've done to each other, I don't even want to know."  
  
"Lafayette, I-"  
  
"I love you both, but I can't stay like this anymore. I can't do it anymore. I'm sorry, but I can't."  
  
Hercules nodded. "We understand. You're gonna stay with Alex though, right?"  
  
"Until he gets better, then I'm probably going to tell him the same thing."  
  
They didn't talk much after that, not sure what to say when someone you weren't really dating breaks up with you and tells you they love you for the first time. Hercules wiped tears away when he left to go home and John followed, waving goodbyes. He took Hercules' hand and walked out with him, waiting for a cab when Hercules asked:  
  
"Wanna go out with me sometime?"  
  
John stared ahead of him, nodded. "Sure. Yeah, okay."  
  
"Great, see you at home. I'll be back in a bit."  
  
John nodded as Hercules got into a taxi and it drove off, not fully processing what he just asked until he was already gone.  
  
Holy shit, wait.

**Author's Note:**

> fast forward and john and hercules probably break up bc hercules wants to be human and john wants to just DIE before he's 30 and doesn't stop tusslin 
> 
> laf and alex probably stay together for a while and either break up or become a Thing with thomas who knows!!
> 
> tumblr: lol-phan-af!!


End file.
